Sandi Genser-Maack remembers quivering with excitement as she told a relative during a visit to Tennessee that she’d found a treasure. Upon revealing that her find was two Doggie Diner mugs made by TEPCO, she found her relative clearly unimpressed.

The Richmond resident had a decidedly more sympathetic audience Sunday when about 150 people packed a meeting room, with many having to stand, in the Open House Senior Center to hear her talk about the collection she and husband Lynn Maack have amassed over the past 20 to 25 years.

“Collectors understand something that those who are not collectors will never understand,” she said.

The presentation was sponsored by the El Cerrito Historical Society. Lynn Maack ran the slide show featuring historical photos and information and images of TEPCO ceramics as Genser-Maack told the audience the plant’s history and talked about the couple’s collection. Before and afterward, audience members crowded around several tables filled with items from the Maacks’ collection. While the display was full of colorful dishes, like items made for Trader Vic’s Restaurant featuring a skull, scorpion, pirate, pineapple, and coconut, Genser-Maack said it represents only a small portion of their collection.

Audience members chimed in during the talk and chatted afterward about their own recollections of the plant.

Genser-Maack prefaced her comments by noting that there are conflicting accounts of some details about the beginnings of the Technical Porcelein and China Ware Co. She said it started in about 1918 in Albany (other accounts place it first in the founder's El Cerrito yard and then later in Albany), with the El Cerrito plant at Manila and Kearney added to the operation about 1931. It was at one time the largest restaurant-ware maker west of the Mississippi, she said.

She said she and her husband, collectors of Richmond memorabilia , started acquiring the local restaurant ware after learning about TEPCO at an antique show.

“Collecting postcards is one thing,” she said. “Heavy TEPCO is another.”

TEPCO’s heft was a theme that popped up several times, making it a chore for those who have reason to lift large quantities of it like Harry Kiefer, who recalls picking up truckloads of “seconds” after school from the Albany plant in the early 1940s and hauling it to be sold at the family’s store at Fairmount and San Pablo avenues.

The ware was used in many restaurants and is still used in a few today, and pieces were also made specifically for the military and others such as the U.S. Forest Service. At least part of its popularity stemmed from its durability, though Genser-Maack said they discovered the hard way it is not impossible to break a TEPCO item, having lost a couple of rare pieces in the process of setting up a 2007 exhibit at the Richmond Museum of History.

Locals recall being allowed to help themselves to “seconds” stacked outside the factory, and shards of TEPCO discards can still be found in abundance where they were dumped decades ago at "TEPCO beach" at Point Isabel.

Among those at the talk was John M. Pagliero of Napa, the founder’s grandson, who said afterward that he believes the plant’s closure in 1968 came as a result of a combination of factors, including foreign competition, issues within the family and the plant’s location in an area that was becoming increasingly residential and therefore inappropriate for industry.